The Hungry

Andre Infante

Additive 234, Additive 234, the magic 234. The words were a little song in his head as he skipped down the hallway. He mouthed the words, ‘Additive 234’. Magic, that worked. This was going to be bigger than caffeine. Hell, this was going to be bigger than salt. They were going to give him a medal for this. Chris rounded the corner, doing something damn near a dance.

Additive 234: It was amazing in its simplicity, a tiny little protein that triggered twinning in mitochondria. More mitochondria meant more energy, faster metabolism. The one tiny little protein could change your life. The stuff was perfect. Easy to make, no side effects, a million applications. It was so obvious; he was amazed nobody had thought of it before.

The project was Chris's baby, even more than Jim's. He'd invented the stuff, and he'd been pulling long hours for months. Now he was finally about to reap the rewards. That's why he was in here on the first Saturday of a three day weekend. Not even the janitor was here. He and Jim had both told their wives they were going to a ball game across town, then jogged back to the office so they could come in and get some work finished without nagging about life/work balance. Chris was honestly surprised he’d gotten away with it; he’d never much liked football. Helen, thankfully, had forgotten this in her joy at his decision to have some fun. Fun! Fun was for people without important things to do. Besides, there’d be time enough for fun later, once they were rich bastards living in rich bastard land. Maybe a vacation in Hawaii with Helen and the kids. Or he could just buy one of the smaller islands. Chris strolled into the split office and locked the door behind him.

Jim was staring thoughtfully out the window. He had a bottle of the diet pills in one hand, and was spinning it over and over in his hand. He didn't turn around. He had trimmed down a lot, Chris noted with approval. The tall black man had cut a decidedly doughy figure when Chris had first met him. Now, after a handful of diet pills, he was thin- nearly gaunt, and had boundless reserves of energy. He’d started running to work every day just to burn the excess energy.

Jim ignored him, and Chris sat down at his desk, re-reading the latest letter from the FDA. After reviewing the mouse studies and some early clinical trials in humans, they were green-lighting the substance for wide release. Chris was jubilant. He just needed to handle a bit of paperwork, and then there'd be time enough to break out the champaign. He knew, sort of, that a lot of money must have changed hands somewhere in order to get such an early approval, but it just wasn’t important. The stuff was safe, so what did it matter?

Jim coughed, and wiped his nose. He’d had an ugly cold for a few days. Chris was vaguely annoyed at him for not working, but resolved to talk to him about it later. He gripped the pencil. He had absolutely no doubt that no matter how many trials you ran, they would all show the same thing: perfect safety. He was sure of this, because he'd been taking the stuff for months now. He felt amazing. No side effects. He was on a permanent runner's high, he had boundless reserves of energy, never even got tired anymore. Best of all, he shed weight like water. His wife was ecstatic, especially now that he'd given her a bottle of the diet pills for her birthday. The sex had never been better. All those extra mitochondria were churning his cells into frothing cauldrons of energy. Chris felt better, slept better, food tasted better. He ate a lot more, but that was a small price to pay- hardly a price at all, really.

He glanced at his miracle mice through the plexiglass window in the wall to the long room of shelves. The mice ran about in their cages all around the walls. The 234 mice were faster, stronger, leaner than their normal counterparts. Even smarter – their brains worked faster, and so did his. He could feel it working. Drawing new connections, thinking faster than ever. Everyone commented on it. Chris was sure the army would want to buy the stuff by the ton. He'd done a few experiments, giving mice high doses of additive 234. The purple pills, the ones that wouldn’t be on the market for another eighteen months. He hadn't finished the study, yet, but he was fairly sure if the stuff did to people what it did to mice, the first army to buy from him would be ruling the world inside ten years. God, soldiers that could think faster, run faster, carry more, go for days without sleep! The possibilities were endless.

Chris was totally confident in good old 234. He'd even begun upping his doses. If he felt this good with a two-fold speedup of metabolism, imagine how he'd feed with a five fold; or a fifty. He'd taken some of the purple pills the night before. He couldn’t quite recall how many, actually. It has been late, and he’d been a little drunk. Well, it didn’t matter. He’d clearly taken enough, because he could feel the deep warmth throughout his body; waste heat from cellular fission. He could feel his mind and body broaching a crest into a new plateau of clarity and strength. At this rate, he'd be the smartest, strongest, fastest man in the world by noon.

The pencil snapped between his fingers. Man, he was starving; what time was it? He checked his watch. Only 8:30; it felt like lunchtime already. Hell - it felt like dinner time. He could murder a bacon cheeseburger. He considered ordering a pizza. He glanced regretfully at the pile of empty cardboard boxes in the conference room from breakfast. He needed to cut down on the junk food. 234, wonderful as it was, wouldn't save you from malnutrition. Jim had only picked at his – four slices. But, then, his wife knew how to cook. Helen, lovely as she was, had once started a grease fire cooking a hot pocket. Chris did most of the cooking, though not as much lately. He felt a little guilty about that. Definitely a vacation in Hawaii, when this was all over. He checked his watch again, grabbed another pencil and got back to filling out paperwork. After this was done, he was going to go get a chocolate bar. No, two chocolate bars - he was craving sugar. Maybe a coke, too, an honest coke, none of that diet crap. It wouldn't hurt him. He could metabolize the sugar, and what else was there in coke? Water and flavorings? The flavorings and water would pass right through.

He finished filling out the document and turned to Jim. Jim was still staring at the horizon as though grimly contemplating the fate of every dead baby in the world.

"Hey. Earth to Jim. Why the long face? You want to get some lunch? I'd kill for a hot meal."

Jim nodded.

"Yeah, yeah, just, hold up a minute, okay? There may be a hitch."

Chris stared at him. His stomach growled insistently. He really didn’t have time for this.

"What the hell are you talking about, Jim? What hitch?"

Jim sighed.

"Just. Look, what’s the median increase in metabolism after a three month regiment on 234?"

Chris rubbed his eyes. He didn't want to say anything, but his stomach was arcing with pain, and he felt light headed from hunger.

"Fine. Sounds good. Let's talk over l-lunch."He swallowed.

"Just, sit down, Chris. This is important."

Chris' muscles screamed at him. He sat slowly, bouncing a little in his seat with frustration. Jim looked distinctly haggard. He glanced up at Chris.

"Chris, how much food would you say the world produces?"

Chris fiddled with the pencil. He was so damn hungry. He could barely concentrate on anything Jim was saying. He felt dizzy. He wasn't sure he was going to make it to the restaurant. Maybe he was coming down with something. A cold. That’d make sense, maybe Jim had given him his cold. His stomach twinged again. He tried to focus on what Jim was saying. He shrugged.

Jim kept talking, rushing.

"So, I thought, okay, but I'm getting ahead of myself. We can make more food. Probably twice as much if we get our act together. So, I did the math. Three months after we reach saturation, we'll need twice as much food. Six months, three times as much. And, Chris, no matter how I figured it, after five years, the numbers never added up." Chris stared at him. He could swear he feel his body starting to digest his muscle tissue. He wasn't even thinking anymore. The icy plains of clarity were growing hellish. His heart was pounding in his ears. He was so. Damn. Hungry.

Jim was still talking.

"I know what you're going to say. If you don't have food, your metabolism would slow back down again. I thought he same thing, so I thought, well, let's test it. So, I got a bunch of mice and dosed them. Gave them nine years worth of the purple pills, and gave them only the same amount of food I give to the regular mice. Left them for three days. Come on, take a look."

Chris followed him across the room in a daze. Jim carefully unlocked the blue door to the test labs, then locked up behind them. They stepped through the door and into the climate-controlled room they stored the mice in. A thousand red eyes tracked his movements. A small portion of his mind noticed a lot of empty feeders. His belly was starting to distend horribly. Sweat was running down his back. The air was cold and stank like wood chips and rat urine, the smell masking his sweat. His skin felt hot and sore. He could hardly stand. They crossed down the winding corridors. It was chilly in here, and he wasn't familiar with this area. Only the lab techs went in here - and, evidently, Jim. Technically, as persons who stood to profit from the results of the study, neither he nor Jim were allowed in this area until the last few studies were finished. He hoped Jim knew the way back. His head hurt. He could feel his joints swelling. Up ahead, Jim opened up a vent in one corner of the floor, and crawled inside. Ordinarily, Chris would have commented. Today, he just followed.

"Sorry for the secrecy; this could sink us if I was wrong, so I had to be sure. Nobody would ever look in here. I ended up stealing a key from a janitor."

Jim padlocked the vent into place, crawled down several turns until Chris was totally lost in the dark, and turned on a flashlight taped to the ceiling of the duct. He looked shaky, and his face took on nightmarish lines in the dim space. He pushed a cage towards Chris. Chris stared into the wet, sticky mess at the bottom of the cage. The mice showed all the usual signs of 234 dosage: larger muscles, leaner bodies. Well, what was left of the bodies. Two of them had been gnawed into not much more than fur and blood, and the last one was curled in the corner, abdomen bloated, limbs emaciated. It was covered in bite marks, and was already well into decomposition. The 234 must’ve got into the bacteria.

"They ate all the food in the first three hours. After that they ate everything. The plastic, the wood chips, everything. For all practical intents and purposes, they were in there for over a month. They started eating each other by the end of the first day. The biggest one finished consuming the others toward the beginning of the second day, and starved to death before the end of the third day.

Chris stared at Jim, muscles trembling. His brain was shutting down. The mice didn’t matter. Jim definitely didn’t matter. All that mattered was the agony of hunger trapped in his body with him. All the little voices were running around in panicked circles, while something deeper and simpler was rising to the surface. The last really conscious thought Chris ever had waswell, so much for that vacation. God, I-Jim spoke quietly.

"People are going to die, Chris. In a couple of years, things are going to get really bad. We need to call the FDA, have them revoke the release. We need to dispose of the cultures, burn our notes, wipe our hard drive, get rid of all the rats. We need to shut this down, and we need to do it now. The guy from corporate will be down in two hours to pick up our files. You and I both know they'll take it to market anyway. Even if we went public, I think people would still take it to market. Look at us, Chris. Can you live with this?”

Chris was staring at a metal wall of the duct. He glanced downward at the pencil he was gnawing on. There was nothing left but the eraser and the metal. He felt the splinters in the roof of his mouth with his tongue. He couldn't even feel the pain. A few drops of blood fell onto his tongue. An indescribable pain dwelled in his guts as he began to digest his stomach lining. Uncontrollable energy surged through his body, and he tasted copper. He turned thoughtfully to Jim.

"Chris, are you with me on this? Goddamn it, Chris. Chris? Jesus, you don't look so good..."

He turned to Jim, baring his teeth. Jim began to back down the duct, but they were caged in. Even if there wasn't a grate, it didn't matter. Chris' knew the burning peace on the other side of starvation. His body was running on fumes but it was enough. Jim fumbled with the padlock key, and dropped it. It fell into a crack in the duct and vanished. The raw, flat hunger that Chris had become summed Jim up in terms of protein and fat and came to a decision.

The hunger lunged.

Author's note:

And another radical change in tone. Any readers I wind up with at the end of this will be exceptionally well-rounded individuals.

ADDENDUM:

Well. This had proved to be my most popular story to date. It's got more views than everything else on this site put together. I did not expect that.